5K Turkey Trot

My mom is getting back in shape and has been attending a class with her friend Pat from work. This class is a free class held at the Bloomingdale Park district. She found out about it in the newspaper and has been going to this class every Sunday morning for quite a few weeks. It is taught by a chiropractor named Dr. Erin Ducat who owns her own chiropractic firm called Chiro One Wellness Center. The class is called walk to run and you gradually start running more and more, farther and farther as the class progresses. Towards the end of the class your goal is to be mainly running and not walking. My mom has been raving about the class every Sunday when she comes home from it. She has made excellent progress in the few weeks shes been taking it.
The class is over now but to finish the class off everyone participated in a 5K run. This 5k/half marathon turkey trot was held yesterday at a forest preserve in Schaumburg. I came to support my mom and take some pictures of course.
My mom and her class were all participating in the 5k run/walk but there were also people there running in the half marathon. All together they had over 2,000 people registered to run yesterday. 550 of which were there for the 5k race which is three miles long. I'm so proud of my mom for doing this, she did a great job! She ran the entire three miles without walking. Her time was 34:16:3 and for never having ran a 5k race in her life that's pretty darn awesome. She almost beat Dr. Erin to who is experienced and has been doing this for a long time. Dr. Erins time was 34:05:8.
During the race my mom caught up to Dr. Erin right as she was going to start walking a little but when she saw my mom was going to keep charging ahead she said no way. I'm supposed to be the one beating you haha.
Before the race they had chiropractors there to stretch you out and different health food and drink tents giving away free stuff. They also had a man dressed up in a turkey costume who also ran the 5k.
The Schaumburg High School cheerleaders were there also, cheering on the runners at the start and end of the race. They were also handing out metals to the runners with the best times.
In honor of Thanksgiving this 5k Turkey Trot helped everyone lose those extra pounds they put on eating all the yummy food on Thanksgiving. Now that winters coming my mom wont be able to get out and run so she'll have to break out the treadmill that's been sitting in our family room for years.

Mom and Pat
















Getting stretched out before the race.











Power Bar Tent











The start and finish line of the race.











Conant High School Cheerleaders!











The turkey and I













Dr. Erin Ducats Walk/Run class- group photo

Thanksgiving

This Thanksgiving was spent at our house. We had Uncle Larry, Aunt Laurel, Jessica, and Carl over for Dinner. Teri and Kyle were also able to stop by for a little while with the girls before we ate. It's not often that we get to see Kyri and Tessa so I was glad they were able to make it. Kyri loves coming over to play with our horses and Tessa is just a happy baby all together. She was all smiles on Thanksgiving, I cant believe shes almost walking.
I enjoyed seeing everyone and eating a ton of food before I had to go to work. An eight hour shift on Thanksgiving isn't the greatest thing ever but I survived. I cant believe Thanksgiving has already come and gone. It went to fast for me, I need a rewind button.

Self Portrait












Tessa












Kyri and Grandma B playing with horses.














Kyri- Tambourine Parade












Tessa, Grandma B and Great Grandma.












Turkey













Dad cutting the turkey.












Thanksgiving Dinner.

56

Yesterday the 14th of November was my dads 56th birthday. It was a laid back day and we didnt really do much to celebrate but order Rosatis pizza for dinner. My dad didnt want to go out for dinner because he wanted grandma to be included. Unfortunatley she didnt even know it was his birthday. When she asked why we were having pizza for dinner dad told her it was because it was his birthday.
For my dads birthday I bought him some of those scratch off cards from the gas station that say win 1,000 a week for an entire year. Sadly we only won about $3.00 of off those but now we can buy three more scratch off cards.
My mom also got my dad a new flavor of beer to make. We had to get at least one photo of the birthday boy with his happy birthday hat on so here it is.

Dad with his hat and new beer flavor.

Happy Birthday

This past Saturday we celebrated Taylors 18th birthday. The original Hill Street fabulous four, Holly, Danielle, Kristi and Taylor are all 18 and over.
They had a small family party for Taylor like they usually do every year at there house for the girls birthdays. We had yummy chinese food from Silver Lake for dinner this year. Taylor works there so she was able to get an employee discout on the catering. After dinner, presents, and cake we had a great bonfire!
Taylor is the youngest from our group and once she turns 21 the family partys will end. They have had a family party for the girls every single year since they were born. A tradition of many years will be ending in three years when Taylor turns twenty one. I hope to make it to every party until then and enjoy it while it lasts.
:)


Holly and Taylor.














Holly, Gianna, Taylor, and Danielle.














Holly and Danielle.














Taylor's 18.














Sisters :)














Opening presents.
















Chocolate eclaire cake.














Bonfire.

Happy Halloween!

This Halloween I had to work all night but I made the best of it anyways. I dressed up as a space cadet and I did my hair in pig tales. I had twisted my pigtails onto the top of my head and put lots hair spray in them so they were all warped like I came from space when I took them down.
I wore silver gloves I had found at my house and the costume also came with a light up wand. Over all the costume was just genius in general because the middle panel on the costume lit up to sound, voice and music. Even though I worked on Halloween I had a blast dressing up at least.
After work I went over to my friend Carina's house and we all checked out the pictures from our Starved Rock camping trip. After that I passed out at home in my bed but luckily my teacher cancelled Tuesday morning class so I got to sleep in after having a late Halloween night.

Adalberto- Horse Mask













Brian- Cowboy
















Meghan- Baseball player
















Melissa- Snow White






















Darien- Basketball player

Starved Rock Camping Trip

This weekend my friends Carina, Carla, Carol and I drove out to Starved Rock on Saturday morning and camped out over night at the camping grounds there until Sunday. We were also able to enjoy two nice days hiking at Starved Rock.
On Saturday we arrived at our camping grounds early and set up our tent and ate lunch. After lunch we waited until 3:00 which was our check in time and then we drove over to Starved Rock State Park and went hiking all day. We saw tons of canyons and there were lots of pretty colorful trees everywhere.
Around 6:00 pm it was starting to get a little bit dark so we left starved rock having only hiked through about half the grounds. We drove back to our camp site and attempted to cook hot dogs on a fire. We were able to make a fire no problem with starter logs my friends had brought but we didn't really have anything to cook our hot dogs with. We had to make due with a little stick we found which kind of worked. At least we didn't starve but we did freeze to death in the tent all night. It went from being really hot during the day to absolutely freezing at night. We all tried to stay as warm as possible under our sleeping bags and mounds of blankets. Some how we managed to make it through the night. During the late morning the wind was really strong though and it was hard to sleep with it constantly blowing across the tent and making loud noises.
We ended up getting up kind of early and just decided to eat breakfast and pack everything up and head to starved rock again. So that's what we did and it turned out to be a decent day. We were able to hike almost all day until about 2:00 when it started raining pretty hard. Unfortunately we were as far away from the main lodge as possible so we got pretty wet walking all the way back. It was all worth it though because we saw some awesome canyons on the second day of starved rock. They were even cooler then the ones we had seen the day before.
Next time we decide to do this we're going in the summer time. I had a great time despite the cold we endured at night. It wasn't cold at all hiking so at least we enjoyed that.





































































I couldnt choose the best photo's to post on my blog because I thought they were all so great haha. :)